October 5

October 5 is the 279th day of the year, and the American record for it runs from 1869 to 1991 — a span of 122 years. The entry that anchors it: The U.S. suspended the Commercial Import Program, 1963.

In the decades after the Civil War, the date marked a country remaking itself. In 1869, the Eastman tunnel, in Minnesota, United States, collapses during construction, causing a landslide that nearly destroys St. Anthony Falls. Eight years on, in 1877, the Nez Perce War in the northwestern United States comes to an end.

In the postwar decades the date belonged to a nation of enormous reach and unfinished arguments. In 1963, the U.S. suspended the Commercial Import Program, its main economic support for South Vietnam, in response to the oppression of Buddhists by President Ngô Đình Diệm. Seven years on, in 1970, the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is founded in the United States.[citation needed]. Then, in 1982, Tylenol products are recalled after bottles in Chicago laced with cyanide cause seven deaths. Four years on, in 1986, Eugene Hasenfus's plane was shot down by Nicaraguan forces while carrying weapons to the Contra rebels on behalf of the U.S. government; he was subsequently captured, leading to an international controversy. Two years on, in 1988, during the United States vice-presidential debate, Democratic candidate Lloyd Bentsen told his opponent Dan Quayle, "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."

In living memory, the date has kept adding to the record. In 1991, an Indonesian Air Force C-130 crash kills 135 people.

The date is also a birthday. Among the Americans born on October 5: Jonathan Edwards (1703), American pastor and theologian; David Wilber (1820), American lawyer and politician; Henry Chadwick (1824), English-American historian and author; Chester A. Arthur (1829), American general, lawyer, and politician, 21st President of the United States; and Helen Churchill Candee (1858), American journalist and author.

October 5 is also a date of endings. Among the Americans who died on it: Tecumseh (1813), American tribal leader; Thomas C. Durant (1885), American railroad tycoon; Sam Warner (1927), Polish-American director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded Warner Bros.; and Renée Adorée (1933), French-American actress.

The date carries formal observance as well — International Day of No Prostitution. Taken together, the 8 entries on October 5 span 122 years of American life. A date is an arbitrary container, but what fills it is not arbitrary at all.